MRS. BUSH: Well, thanks again. Thank you all for coming out today
again. What we're seeing here at this Salvation Army site is what
people can do, what faith-based groups around our country are doing all
the way across the Gulf Coast.

This site is pretty much run by the Salvation Army. The food is
being cooked by another faith-based group, the Southern Baptist
Convention. Most of these people who are cooking here today in Biloxi
are from Kansas and Nebraska. They're volunteer medical workers that
are here from all over the country.

And I feel so encouraged every time I visit one of these sites
across the Gulf Coast. We've driven by the desolation that the
hurricane left here. We've seen here -- I've seen here the most
desolation that I've seen, because I haven't been that close to the
coast until this trip.

But I also see a lot of optimism. I think people are hopeful, and
I want to encourage the American public to keep helping. It's going to
take a long time. And so I want to encourage everyone across the
country to continue to volunteer, to continue to contribute. There are
a lot of websites where you can find out how you can help. If your
school wants to help a school on the Gulf Coast, you can find that by
looking at www.ed.gov , "Hurricane Help for
Schools," and find out if there are things -- these schools can post
what they need and other groups can post what they have, and that will
work as a clearinghouse so you can give to the schools that need help.

Biloxi started school yesterday. I want to encourage people all
along the Gulf Coast to make sure your kids get in school, either in
your home town, or in the town where you're staying, if you've evacuated
your home town, because it's really important for children to the have
the normalcy of going to school, besides not wanting your kids to fall
behind in school this year because of the hurricanes.

I feel very encouraged. I want to thank all the people from all
over the country who are volunteering here in Biloxi and across the Gulf
Coast for helping people. And we see what can happen when governments
work with each other, when volunteer and faith-based groups work with
each other, when corporations -- earlier we saw the truck that Sears had
driven down, the new clothes that were sorted by size so people could
really find the sizes they wanted of new clothes for their -- for
themselves and for their children.

It's going to take all of us working together to help people
rebuild their lives. But every time I visit another place on the Gulf
Coast, I'm more encouraged by the spirit of the people who've lost
everything. But as one women said to me today, she said, "I didn't lose
my life, I'm alive," and that's what really, really matters.

So thank you all. And do you have any questions?

Q -- these folks are literally still living in tents here. What
can you tell these people?

MRS. BUSH: Well, I'm encouraged by their strength and by their
stamina. I'm also encouraged by all the people that are helping them.
But they're giving me a lot of messages, too. They're telling me things
that they think are important. They're worried about their insurance.
And that's an issue that people have got to think about here in the --
especially on the Mississippi coast where the tidal surge ruined so many
houses. They want their electricity up in their trailers. They want
an electric pole up on their trailer as soon as possible. They want to
get their kids in school.

I met a lot of teachers today, and they said that only about half
of the kids who were in school in Biloxi last year have come back so
far. Of course, a lot of those kids are probably staying with family
members or in a shelter in another part of the state. But everyone
wants to get back to their normal life as soon as possible, and that's
what I'm hearing.

Q Is everything being done possible for all these people, do you
think?

MRS. BUSH: I think a lot is being done. I mean, I feel very, very
encouraged by the ordinary citizens who dropped what they were doing and
moved down here to help people, by the first responders, the police and
the firemen here, who have been great, as well as the police and firemen
who have come from all over the country.

Q How can the ordinary person around the country -- how can they
help?

MRS. BUSH: Well, there are a lot of ways you can help. You can
get on the website, www.freedomcorps.gov
, and that will tell you a lot of volunteer opportunities all over the
country. You can contribute money to First Book. You can do that by
firstbook.org. First Book is going to try to replenish the libraries
and the school libraries here on the Gulf Coast.

There are a lot of ways you can give money still. You can continue
to give money to the Salvation Army, to the Red Cross. And that really
helps. It's not a great idea to send your old clothes down unless you
have sorted them, you have them sized, and they're wrapped, very
carefully wrapped that way so that people can really find their size.
They still need volunteers everywhere to help sort through clothes that
aren't sized.

Q How was your reality TV debut? And why was that the right
venue for this?

MRS. BUSH: Well, it was actually very exciting and interesting to
be with Extreme Makeover, Home Extreme Makeover. One of the interesting
parts about what they're doing here today, they have brought the new
clothes that were sorted by size from Sears, and that's what they were
doing here, because obviously there's so many homes to be made over
here. They haven't chosen one yet. I'm trying to encourage them to
maybe choose a school or a library to do, which would help everybody in
the community.

One of the people who's on the show with them had her house redone
in New Orleans last February, and her house is still okay. It didn't
flood, it just got a little bit of water in it. And so she especially
wanted to be here. She wanted to tell people you can make it, things
will work. And she felt because she had been given the opportunity to
have her house redone after she lost her husband and her oldest son in a
car accident that she wanted to be able to pass on to people the way
people had helped her.

And that's what I think I see around the country, and that is
people passing on their own good fortune right now to people who need
help.

Q From a personal standpoint, how does this affect you? This is
the first time you've seen it up close.

MRS. BUSH: That's right. It's heartbreaking. It really is
heartbreaking, the debris, the amount of debris that you know includes
people's -- all of the items that people owned, their scrapbooks, their
pictures, the things that really meant something to them. It really is
quite heartbreaking to see the devastation of it.

And this also reminds me of how huge this area is that's been
devastated, from New Orleans all the way to Mobile. It's a really huge
area, it's a big area to clean up and to get people back into a normal
life. And that's why it's really important that we don't lose hope and
we keep working, because it will take a while.